Data Center Description
Animal Diversity Web (ADW) is an online database of animal natural history, distribution, classification, and conservation biology at the University of Michigan.

Animal Diversity Web Has

·Thousands of species accounts about individual animal species. These may include text, pictures of living animals, photographs and movies of specimens, and/or recordings of sounds. Students write the text of these accounts and we cannot guarantee their accuracy.

·Descriptions of levels of organization above the species level, especially phyla, classes, and in some cases, orders and families. Hundreds of hyperlinked pages and images illustrate the traits and general biology of these groups. Professional biologists prepare this part.

ADW is a large searchable encyclopedia of the natural history of animals. Every day, thousands of classroom students and informal visitors use it to answer animal questions. ADW provides a way to make the contents of research museums available globally for teaching and research. So far, our efforts have been directed mainly at mammals. Photographs of scientific specimens are available for representative species from most mammal families. We've also included several hundred Quick Time Virtual Reality Movies of skulls.

An essential feature of the ADW is student authorship of species accounts. Students learn considerable detail about the biology of a species, then share their work with users worldwide by making it part of our permanent database.